The author is a Forbes contributor. The opinions expressed are those of the writer.

Loading ...

Loading ...

This story appears in the {{article.article.magazine.pretty_date}} issue of {{article.article.magazine.pubName}}. Subscribe

Far Cry 3 is an excellent game, but it makes some unfortunate trade-offs between story and open-world gameplay.

I'm creeping through a gorgeous jungle, full of color, beneath a deep blue sky with my upgraded SMG equipped with a Red-Dot Sight and a Silencer.

Below me is a pirate outpost, manned by a handful of guards. There's one or two snipers from what I can tell, and a Heavy lumbering about. I've spotted a couple crazy guys packing Molotov Cocktails who won't drop dead even if when I shoot them, they erupt into flame.

I have choices now.

If I go in guns blazing I might be able to take everyone out, but they'll almost certainly raise the alarm and then I'll have to face reinforcements---and even if I take them out and capture this outpost, I won't get the experience points that a stealthier approach would give me.

If I can dismantle the alarm instead, even if I'm spotted the pirates won't be able to call for help. This will net a bigger reward, and after the initial sabotage, the fight will be much easier.

But the best thing I can do is to dismantle the alarm as a precautionary measure and then silently, methodically, take out each guard without any of them noticing me. That's the goal, and I won't be happy with this assault unless I carry it out flawlessly. I can lay down some mines to help me make a quick get away after dismantling the guards.

I begin planning my approach.

Then suddenly I hear a growl behind me, and a tiger leaps out of the bush behind me, pinning me to the ground.

I wasn't ready for this. I've been marking targets with my camera, planning my next move, and now I'm shooting frantically at this hulking beast. I manage to kill him, but my gunfire has alerted the pirates. So much for stealth.

Brave New Open World

Far Cry 3 is an interesting game. You play as Jason Brody, a stranded vacationer with no experience shooting people who is suddenly faced with the impossible task of rescuing his friends from the pirates.

If you don't, they'll either be killed or sold into slavery. You have to learn quick, and because this is a video game, you happen to be a very quick study at the art of slaughter.

The game is wide open, spread out across a vast map of various-sized tropical islands populated by the "peaceful" Rakyat natives (who are anything but peaceful) and crazed, bloodthirsty pirates, as well as a menagerie of wildlife ranging from small deer to wild boar and the aforementioned tigers. Not to mention the deadly, annoying Komodo dragons. I hate those things.

The island is beautiful and dangerous and a hell of a lot of fun to explore, which turns out to be a pretty big part of the game.

The map starts out mostly blurred out, with only a handful of location icons in the areas you haven't explored, such as radio towers.

Climbing a radio tower unlocks another segment of the map, giving you a great deal more information about roads, animals, plant-life, and new side missions.

Likewise, the map is colored in to show which portions are under pirate control and which portions are under tribal control. You can change the color of the map by capturing outposts. This also unlocks new fast travel locations, convenient weapon shops, and new missions.

There's all sorts of stuff to do---an overwhelming amount, actually.

Missions are varied, ranging from racing quests to hit jobs to animal hunts.

Like Assassin's Creed with Guns and Actually Fun Combat

If you ever wondered what Assassin's Creed III would be like if it were a first-person shooter set in a jungle island full of maniacs, well Far Cry 3 is here to help. In fact, it's sort of a mixture of Red Dead Redemption, Assassin's Creed, and Uncharted, all mixed up and filtered into a first-person-shooter.

AC3 and Far Cry 3 are very, very similar in terms of their open-world and side-mission mechanics. You can search for hidden relics, discover the islands lore via lost letters, and unlock the backstory by finding memory chips. All the while you gain experience and level up, unlocking weapons and skills and various other perks, and climbing towers to expand access to the map.

It's basically a light RPG mixed with a big wide-open shooter, and in many ways I think it actually feels more RPG-ish than Borderlands 2 with its never-ending supply of bigger and more preposterous firearms.

Unlike Assassin's Creed III, however, the game doesn't get off to a really slow start. Rather, it begins with a surprising intensity driven largely by the wonderfully maniacal pirate chief Vaas.

Here's where things get tricky for me. On the one hand, Far Cry 3 starts out with a really compelling crisis and momentum.

There's a story here, a rising intensity, an immediacy that drives your every move. You have to save your friends and your girlfriend and your little brother from certain death or enslavement, and you're up against apparently insurmountable odds.

The clock is ticking....

Naturally, the thing to do is explore the island, run drop-off missions, and search for relics. Or, wait, that doesn't make sense---does it?

Difficult Compromises

The thing about Far Cry 3 is that it makes a trade-off between story and its open world design. It achieves both these things quite well, but when you couple the two you lose that sense of urgency. "I'll play ball," Jason says at one point, "As long as it helps me find my brother." And it will help you save your people, but it sure feels like you (as Jason) don't mind taking your sweet time.

So far, I've spent a great deal of the game hunting animals and using their skins to craft larger ammo pouches and other valuable items. The crafting system is simple but effective, and crafting gives you distinct and even necessary advantages as you progress. I've also spent time crafting syringes to heal myself or give me boosts in battle. This is another system that works quite well.

And, of course, I've sought out as many radio towers as possible, climbing them like I'd climb a parapet in Assassin's Creed, to gain knowledge of the island by broadening my horizons.

The most fun I've had is my sneak attacks against the pirate outposts. A successful sneak attack is at once challenging and rewarding and gives you blessed fast travel locations, so I've gotten side-tracked from the main story many times over.

This is a weird, perhaps impossible balancing act, and the game doesn't really pull it off. Maybe it can't, maybe that's too tall an order, and maybe the trade-off made is the right one.

Still, it's almost like playing two different games. They're both fun, but they feel disjointed. The story feels like something that should be urgent. It feels wrong to be doing all this side stuff while my friends languish in captivity.

But it's the way you level up and become powerful enough to progress through the story, and it's fun, so off you go to play ball. It makes sense to have the game function this way, and the open-world nature of the game really makes it a much more interesting, addictive shooter than most.

But the urgency of the story itself suffers as a consequence.

Only the Lonely

My second quibble with the game so far is simply how populated the island is, how civilized it feels despite its piracy and poverty.

When I first caught glimpses of the game, it looked like you'd escape the pirates and then have to survive the jungle on your own. This is not the case.

Rather, you have an entire village of warriors to help out, a steady supply of weapons and ammo, and access to all sorts of vehicles.

I thought the game would be more frightening, that I would be alone in the way you faced the island alone in the first Far Cry (at least for most of the game.) But other than a few gripping scenes in the main story, there's little fright at all.

As a member of one side of a civil war, your role is more heroic and less survivalist.

The stakes feel lower than they could be, and the need to carefully make your way across the island is all but absent for most of the game.

Stuck on a pirate-infested island all by yourself or with the aid of maybe just a handful of people would have made the game much more intense. As it stands, too often it feels lackadaisical rather than engrossing.

Conclusion (So Far)

Of course,quibbles are only one part of the story.

As I mentioned, the missions and side jobs you take on in the open-world portion of the game are often lots of fun.

Unlocking more weapon slots and ammo storage is a process which requires exploration and experience. Most everything you set out to do is entertaining, and there's so much of it that you pretty much never run out of content.

The story is well written and acted by talented voice actors, and the game looks and feels great, even on the aging Xbox 360.

Far Cry 3, in other words, is a great game in spite of its trade-offs and regardless of the ways it might have been better.

It's not a perfect game---and I certainly wouldn't give it a 10/10 if I were scoring it---but it's much more interesting and fun than Assassin's Creed III, and the sheer quantity of content sprinkled across the islands, and the many ways you can tackle each fight and mission, make it one of the better shooters in a long time. Certainly the game is a contender for 2012's best shooter.

I think perhaps the most critical thing about any game is whether or not I feel like finishing it. This is especially true as someone who reviews games. Does playing it feel like a chore? Do I keep thinking, "I wish I was playing Dark Souls instead?"

I want to finish Far Cry 3, and that must say something about the game. More to come in Part Two.

Far Cry 3 launches tomorrow, December 4th, on PS3, Xbox 360, and PC.

(P.S. I haven't played the multiplayer yet, so expect more installments as I continue to play. I'll check out the PC version as well and report back on how it stacks up against its Xbox 360 counterpart.)